State of the Climate – Give yourself a update in climate knowledge

❝ An international, peer-reviewed publication released each summer, the State of the Climate is the authoritative annual summary of the global climate published as a supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

❝ The report, compiled by NOAA’s Center for Weather and Climate at the National Centers for Environmental Information is based on contributions from scientists from around the world. It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments located on land, water, ice, and in space.

❝ This is the twenty-seventh issuance of the annual assessment now known as State of the Climate [large .pdf]. Surface temperature and carbon dioxide concentration, two of the more publicly recognized indicators of global-scale climate change, set new highs during 2016, as did several surface and near-surface indicators and essential climate variables. Notably, the increase in CO2 concentration was the largest in the nearly six-decade observational record.

No jokes about light reading. Reports designed for peer review are heavy on scientific citations. But, I still feel good about the research I went through at the turn of the Millennium with documents published by the Max Planck Institute as they worked their way towards a definitive response to discussions about climate change.

Here’s a chance to keep up with one of the best American-based global sources.

“Record heat, lightning, fires, intense rain: California’s extreme weather gets wilder” (LA Times 9/1/17) http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-lightning-weather-extreme-heat-20170901-story.html “The heat wave that has gripped California for a week took a dramatic turn Thursday as lightning storms sparked brush fires, knocked out power to thousands and caused downpours across the region. Forecasters said the extreme weather will continue through the weekend, with some parts of Northern California flirting with all-time record high temperatures.
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers used more electricity on Thursday battling the heat wave than has ever been used in the agency’s history, DWP officials announced. Customers hit a peak demand of 6,502 megawatts at 4:15 p.m., shattering the previous record of 6,396 megawatts on Sept. 16, 2014. The agency expects a new record to be set Friday as the heat wave continues.
According to UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, the heat this weekend may reach levels never before seen in recorded history in some Northern California cities.
The heat wave is part of a larger high-pressure system that has settled over the Great Basin and has been broiling states from California to Utah and Arizona to New Mexico.
The weather pattern is also at least partially responsible for the behavior of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The system acted as a barrier that blocked Harvey’s path inland. The storm was stopped in its tracks right over Houston, where it continued sucking up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and raining it down on the flooded landscape below.
Crews battling 16 wildfires in California also have had to cope with the heat along with the excruciating physical demands of the job.

August 31, 2017: “White House counselor Kellyanne Conway in a prime time interview Wednesday slammed CNN’s Chris Cuomo for asking about climate change as rescue operations continue for the victims of Hurricane Harvey. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/348678-conway-slams-cnn-anchor-for-asking-about-climate-change-during-harvey “Chris we’re trying to help the people whose lives are literally under water and you want to have a conversation about climate change,” Conway said after Cuomo asked about addressing climate change in the wake of the storm.
…President Trump has expressed doubt about climate change science and his administration has rolled back numerous Obama-era policies aimed at addressing the issue. The president disbanded a federal advisory panel that reported on climate change earlier this month.”

“When it comes to climate change, we’re often debating the impact of just one or two degrees of warming. But when it comes to ocean temperatures, we don’t have a ton of in situ research that shows the consequences of an ever-so-slightly more tepid sea. Now, thanks to a new study published Thursday in Current Biology, we know that when Antarctic Ocean waters warm just one or two degrees Celsius, it completely changes the ecosystem in a way even the study’s authors did not anticipate. “We knew there would be changes, but it was the extent of the change that surprised us,” said Gail Ashton, the lead author of the study and a researcher with the British Antarctic Survey and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, in a phone interview. “We expected maybe a 10 percent growth rate [of certain organisms]. We saw a 100 percent growth rate.” https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjjynb/the-most-realistic-antarctic-warming-experiment-to-date-went-worse-than-expected “…A study earlier this year found that ocean temperatures are rising faster than we thought, and are accelerating, which is why understanding the possible impacts—and whether we might be able to adjust for them—is so important. When just one degree can make such a significant difference, it makes you wonder what three or four degrees might mean.” See also http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)30952-1

“The population of non-native Magnificent bryozoans appears to be on the rise in the Pacific NW. They can only survive in warm waters, 60?F, so increasing occurrences could signal climate change is warming waterways and allowing more of these bryozoans to survive outside their native range.” (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) https://www.fws.gov/fieldnotes/regmap.cfm?arskey=31661 “…There are more than two dozen species of freshwater bryozoan, but this one is truly magnificent. Each gelatinous blob can reach seven feet in diameter and will turn a dark vibrant purple, with shiny white spots. These large gelatinous invertebrates have been called everything from “moss animals” to “dragon boogers,” and are commonly mistaken for amphibian egg masses when seen floating in the water. Each mass is built from hundreds of individual filter feeding zooids, which extend tentacles from the edge of the blob to pull food out of the water.”

President Trump said the drought-stricken Dakotas are “better off” than cities flooded by Hurricane Harvey last month, and that his administration will make the drought there “go away.”http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/349510-trump-drought-stricken-dakotas-better-off-than-harvey-flood-victims“I know you have a little bit of a drought; they had the opposite, believe me,” Trump said during a tax reform speech in Mandan, North Dakota. “You’re better off. You are better off, they had the absolute opposite.” Trump also said he was surprised that droughts could happen “this far north.” We’re doing everything we can but you have a very serious drought. I just said to the governor, I didn’t know you had droughts this far north. Guess what: you have them,” he said. “We’re working hard on it, and it will disappear, it will all go away.”
For decades, Kansas was America’s wheat state. That title recently shifted to North Dakota, as better growing conditions moved north due to warming temperatures. At this rate, Canadian farmers should be put on notice. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/climate-change-will-hit-america-breadbasket-scientists-say-n312091
The drought is expected to persist across eastern Montana and the western side of the Dakotas through at least the end of October, according to the July 20 seasonal outlook produced by the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center.

“How Irma Became Irma: A Monster Storm Six Months in the Making” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/how-irma-became-irma-a-monster-storm-six-months-in-the-making If Irma hits Miami with the same force as a Category 4 storm that struck in 1926, insured losses could reach $125 billion to $130 billion – uninsured losses would add to that.
“Hurricane Irma: A Practically Impossible Storm” https://www.wired.com/story/hurricane-irma-a-practically-impossible-storm/ Hurricane Irma has become the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale—over 800 miles wide, roughly the size of Texas, sustained winds of over 185 miles per hour for more than 24 hours, gusts over 200 mph – All hurricanes have a theoretical maximum intensity, a thermodynamic limit on how fast their winds can blow given ocean temperature and atmospheric temperature. Few hurricanes ever actually reach that limit. But as Irma grew and developed, it came very, very close. If Harvey was a perfect storm, Irma is an almost impossible one. “Irma is anomalous,” says Jim Kossin, an atmospheric scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “This is a record-breaker. Unprecedented. Catastrophic.”

In addition to pulling out of the Paris climate agreement in June, Trump’s proposed budget eliminates funding for a number of important projects like Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that coordinates global climate research; the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, that forms the basis of international climate negotiations like the Paris Agreement; the UN Green Climate Fund (GCF); and climate programs at agencies like the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The funds under attack by the Trump administration include the Clean Technology Fund and the Strategic Climate Fund. The technology fund promotes low-carbon technologies and the climate fund helps vulnerable countries develop their programs to equip them to deal with climate change better. https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Trumps-Crackdown-on-Intl-Climate-Policies-Might-Impact-Hurricane-Affected-Developing-Nations-20170907-0036.html

“New Mexico adapts to decades of drought caused by climate change” http://nmpoliticalreport.com/450122/new-mexico-adapts-to-decades-of-drought-caused-by-climate-change/ For the first time since the federal Drought Monitor began operations in January 2000, New Mexico is completely free of drought or unusually dry conditions. (See http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/RegionalDroughtMonitor.aspx?west )
University of New Mexico Director of Water Resources John Fleck said it’s good news short-term, but the reprieve is mostly due to a generous monsoon season and may not last. “It’s a lot warmer, and so for a given amount of rain and snow that falls, less of that ends up in the river,” Fleck explained. “We’re clearly seeing a decline in the water supply as a result of climate change in New Mexico – there’s no question about that.” However, according to Fleck, conservation is happening more quickly than growth in the West, with data showing water use going down even as the population increases. Scientists say climate change will significantly alter the water cycle, and Fleck said it also will change the landscape. “One of the things that we’re seeing, especially in the forests of northern New Mexico, is die-off of trees because they’re just being hammered by these warmer temperatures,” he said. Since the 1990s, more than 60 million acres of forest have suffered die-offs.